Year: 2021
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: People prioritize moral values differently based on political ideology (Graham et al., 2009) and form ideological conclusions based on these values (Haidt, 2001). For example, conservatives have more positive perceptions of police compared to liberals (Stack & Cao, 1998), in part because of the centrality of law and order as a conservative value. People also justify maintaining their political affiliation by defining opposing conclusions as less credible (Bail et al., 2018; Haidt, 2001). In this study, we investigate how ideological values vs. conclusions affect perceived credibility of and interest in headlines. We hypothesize that conservatives and liberals will rate headlines that have a conclusion consistent with their political orientation as more credible and be more likely to report that they would engage with those articles on social media (SM). We also expect that participants will be more interested in reading articles based on headlines where the values emphasized conflict with conclusions. Finally, we anticipate that frequent SM users will rate headlines as more credible and hold more polarized attitudes toward police than low-frequency users.
Authors: Baker, Morning, Clark, Nick, Harton, Helen
Institution: University of Northern Iowa
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7020986011